


Anything in Life

by peachchild



Series: Second Star to the Right [5]
Category: Peter Pan (1953), The Hobbit RPF
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-23
Updated: 2013-07-23
Packaged: 2017-12-21 04:25:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,077
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/895801
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/peachchild/pseuds/peachchild
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Aidan can be cruel. Dean learns the hard way.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Anything in Life

**Author's Note:**

> So initially, I was going to use questions that my friend Kendra posed to me about the boys in order to write little ficlets that would all go together in one story, but then the first two turned into stories that were several thousand words long, and they didn't feel like they read well together that way. So expect lots of weirdness from this series for the future!
> 
> I think everyone in the English-speaking world knows that I referenced [this song](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bj1AesMfIf8) in this story, but I figured a comment on it probably couldn't hurt!

Dean isn’t one to walk away from an argument, generally speaking. It’s like leaving a sand castle to man itself just as the tide is rolling in; if you’re not there to scrape wet sand up to plaster the crumbling corners back into place, eventually the whole thing will fall. It’ll all break down and erode back into the sea, just a disfigured pile of debris where a masterpiece used to be.

But the tide is a little too strong right now, and unless he wants to get swept out and drown in it, he needs to step away from that castle and hope it’s strong enough to stand on its own.

He ends up in his studio, where he unlocks the back room. He used to so rarely use it; painting at home was easier, more comfortable. It was a secure space surrounded by warmth and light. Since Aidan’s moved in, he finds himself here more and more, because if Aidan is around, his colors infiltrate all the paintings: they’re all bright yellows and deep reds, jagged angles and harsh lines. 

Today, Dean paints by the light of the cloudy afternoon sky, in pale blues and yellows the color of sand. He paints with oils, but the colors smudge like watercolors, refusing to let him define his lines, his paints bleeding together on the palette and on the canvas. The brush smooths and sweeps in fat strokes across the fabric. He made the canvas himself, as he is wont to do on days when he is too wired to paint or to sleep or even to make love. It’s productive and gratifying, and he is exhausted at the end of the process. It leaves him in a space where he can be bundled into bed and curled around by the big spoon of Aidan’s body. 

He paints the beach, a child kicking down a sandcastle, and when he steps back from it, the weariness settles in his shoulders at the sight of it. Because he might as well have painted Aidan.

He props it against the wall to dry and steps outside. He leaves the door propped open to air out the smell of oils and wood and canvas. He makes a perfunctory attempt at wiping his hands clean of the paint, and when he doesn’t do anything beyond smudging it, smearing it into his skin, he gives up and lights a cigarette instead.

He’s just lit his second off the end of his first when Aidan steps around the corner of the building, down the alleyway, his hands stuffed into his pockets. “Hi.” His voice is quiet. 

Dean considers ignoring him, pretending he’s not there. Instead, he directs the plume of smoke from his mouth into the sky, eyeing it as it blooms and then breaks apart, then looks at him. He doesn’t say anything.

“The front door was locked. Wasn’t sure you were here.” 

Dean scrapes ash off the pavement with the toe of his sneaker. 

“You’ve been gone hours. I was worried.” 

He hates that a wash of guilt laps at him. “Sorry.” 

“Don’t be. S’okay.” Aidan kicks the ground. His shoulders are hunched, and he stares at his feet. “I’m sorry, Dean. What I said wasn’t on.”

“No, it wasn’t.”

“I know.” He tosses his head to get a stray curl out of his eyes. “I wasn’t - I didn’t mean to be cruel.”

“Yes, you did.” Dean looks at him for the first time, and Aidan meets his gaze steadily. “That’s exactly what you meant to do, Aidan. We both know that.”

“Well.” He heaves a breath. “I didn’t - I don’t know why I do those things, alright? I don’t know why I say them.”

“You say them to hurt me.”

“Yeah, alright.” His voice cuts impatiently. “I’m just not sure why I do that.”

Dean isn’t sure why either. The breeze catches his hair and brushes it across his forehead. The sun is starting to set, and if he closes his eyes, beyond the sharp odor of car exhaust and Indian restaurants and rubbish bins, he swears he can smell the sea. He almost smiles. Then he thinks of the little boy in the painting, kicking down the sandcastle. “You meant it, you know.”

“I didn’t -”

“No, you did.” Dean tips his head to the side. He’s not sure how his voice sounds so steady. “And I want you to know something. I’ve been thinking about it since I left.” 

“What is it?”

“I want you to know that, even though you can’t go back to Neverland, that doesn’t mean you have to stay with me.” Aidan’s face changes, his eyebrows drawing low. Dean stubs his cigarette out on the wall. “There’s a whole world out there, Aidan, and if I’m not making you happy, then that’s a whole world that can maybe do a better job than I am.” He uses the heel of his foot to push open the door. “I’ll see you at home.”

Aidan doesn’t follow him inside. He breathes a sigh of relief. He breathes for the first time and lets himself crumple.

* * *

The moment Dean walks into the flat, he knows Aidan’s gone. He wonders if he’s supposed to be surprised.

* * * 

“Would you like a magnifying glass to better help you investigate me, detective?”

Adam blinks sheepishly at him, looks away. “I’m just - are you alright?”

“Well, my lover packed a bag and left in the middle of the night, and I haven’t seen him in a week. What do you think?” Dean can feel sleep cracking at the edges of his eyes and lips, but the electric hum of the city kept him awake all night in a way it never has before, thrumming through his veins.

“You know he’s staying with me, right?”

“Yeah.”

“So it’s not like he’s out... gallivanting or something. He’s mostly been sitting around my flat sulking.” 

“Is that supposed to make me feel better?”

“Hey.” Adam’s voice is sharp, in a way it almost never is, and Dean feels something scrape at the inside of his ribcage. He looks down at the camera he’s been fiddling pointlessly with for the last ten minutes. “I know that things are a bit shit right now, but it’s not my fault, alright?”

Dean sighs, runs his hand through his hair. “You’re right. Of course. I’m sorry.”

Adam’s shoulders lose some of their rigidness, and his lips look slightly less pursed. He pushes his glasses up his nose. “Can I ask you something?”

“You’re going to anyway, so you might as well.”

He thinks Adam might scold him again, but he just rolls his eyes. “What _happened_? You two were happy as fucking clams like, two days ago.”

“It’s...” Dean runs his tongue over his lip. “Aidan realized something that I’m surprised he never realized before.” When Adam just raises an eyebrow in question, Dean shrugs. “He realized I’m not the only one out there who might want to love him.”

“Did he cheat on you?”

Dean has to think about that. “No. It’s complicated.” 

Adam knows better than to ask anymore questions, and Dean is grateful that he doesn’t have to answer them. When his next appointment comes in - a family portrait - he throws himself into the job, just so he doesn’t have to think about anything else.

Adam flutters around the studio in that hummingbird way he does, making tea and coffee, holding biscuits between his teeth that he forgets are there, precariously balancing lighting fixtures and flash bulbs and generally making Dean’s heart warm that he has this wonderful friend standing beside him. 

When they lock the doors that night, after Adam knots a completely unnecessary scarf at his throat, he catches Dean’s arm. “Look after yourself, alright? Call me if you need anything: company or a drink or to just scream a bit. Though, if you’re going to do the last one, at least warn me. My eardrums are very sensitive.” 

Dean laughs, tilts his head back to breathe in the warm air of the evening. No scent of the sea this time, but the kabobs shop around the corner catches his senses, and he’s suddenly starving, for the first time in almost two days. “Alright. And - I mean. Keep me updated, yeah? Let me know he’s okay.”

“Of course.” Adam nudges him with his elbow, and they set off in different directions for home.

* * * 

Dean falls into bed in his boxers and sleeps because he can’t stay awake anymore. 

He wakes to the sun warming his shoulders, and he wiggles and kicks the blankets down to the end of the bed. He forgot to close the blinds last night, which is just as well, since he also forgot to set his alarm.

It takes him twenty minutes to roll himself out of bed, into the shower and then out of the flat and to his car. His equipment has been carefully stowed in the trunk since the night before, which is a good thing, considering the time it would have taken to pack it all would have made him that much later. He checks it all again, just in case, cataloguing each piece he’ll need. When he closes the trunk, he jumps to find Aidan standing beside the car, watching him. 

“Jesus,” he breathes out, slings his bag higher on his shoulder. “You scared the piss out of me.”

“Sorry. Wasn’t sure what to say.”

“‘Hello,’ maybe?”

“Probably.” Aidan shrugs a shoulder. “I know you’re doing that shoot today, out at the beach. And Adam’s got that family thing. So... I didn’t know if you might want some help. Or company. Or something.”

Dean hesitates. Aidan looks... good, which is annoying. He wears discomfort the way he wears any emotion: like a second skin. The sharp downturn of his mouth, the slope of his shoulders - it suits him. At least he looks a little like he hasn’t been sleeping well, if the bags under his eyes are anything to go by. Dean adjusts his bag again, fiddles with the strap. “Yeah, alright. If you’re not busy. I could use someone to help... keep sand out of things.” It sounds lame, and it is, but Aidan smiles with his eyebrows and cheekbones and chin, so Dean doesn’t worry too much about it.

Aidan crowds into the passenger's seat, seems too big for the car, even though he’s sat in that seat a thousand times before. He scrunches himself down in the seat, and they pull out onto the road. Dean doesn’t speak, because he’s not completely sure what he should say, and Aidan stares out the window, and they ride in silence, with The Beatles playing on the radio between them. 

_Little darlin’, it seems like years since it’s been clear_.

The sun shines a path down across the water toward them, and Dean stands at the edge of the sand, watching the water lap up against the shore, a dark line, his camera bag slung over his shoulder. The couple they’re photographing, Lee and Evie, are already out on the beach, holding hands and digging their toes into the sand. They laugh together, and Dean wants to know what the joke is, what is so joyous between them.

Aidan appears at his side, bag of spare film and batteries and memory cards in hand. “Ready?” They trudge down through the mounds of sand. Aidan pauses to take off his boat shoes and runs barefoot to catch up with Dean, the shoes swinging from his fingers as he walks. 

They don’t speak much, except for the necessities. Dean takes hundreds of photos. It’s difficult not to, because Lee and Evie are beautiful, and happy, and happiness attracts the camera. He switches out memory cards twice, and his fingers pass over Aidan’s, and Aidan watches him with his eyes big while he works. 

In the end, they spend almost three hours there, and the light changes as the sun moves, shines bright on their heads, hot on the backs of their necks, and they call it quits when Evie’s shoulders, bare in her sundress, begin to burn. They arrange a time to collect the photos, and they wave as they walk off, strolling across the beach back toward their car, and Dean turns back to his own car to pack the trunk.

When he’s through, he sees Aidan, a tiny figure against the water, sitting on the beach, scooping sand into his hands and letting it trickle on through. Dean walks back out to join him. “You ready to go?”

“Not yet.” Aidan squints up at him through the bright sunlight. “Want to make a sandcastle?”

“Not really.”

“Oh.” 

Dean shifts from foot to foot, then plops down beside him and starts scraping sand into some semblance of a tower. “We don’t even have a pail.”

“S’okay. No one said it has to be perfect.” 

They work in silence. Dean rolls his jeans up in an effort to keep them dry. His boots are already pretty much a lost cause, gritty with sand and sea water. They manage to pile together six lopsided towers, and it almost does look like a castle, especially when Aidan collects little shells to press into them as decoration. Dean laughs at the outcome. 

“What a fucking mess.”

Aidan shrugs, digs Dean’s phone from his jacket pocket. He takes a photo of it. “I like it. Looks like us.”

“Terrible?”

“Pretty much, yeah.”

Dean curls his hands in his jacket pockets and stares down at the sorry excuse for a sandcastle. He thinks about his painting. “It’s going to wash away anyway.”

“We’re not though.”

He looks sharply at him. Aidan winces and shrugs. “We’re not. It’s not - We’re forever, you and me.”

“Are we?” Dean says faintly, eyes fluttering. His brain feels like it’s gone to air. “Because if that’s the case, it feels like forever ended.”

“I just - I was angry with you.” Aidan bites his lip. “Well, no. That’s not really true. I didn’t know how to deal with things.”

“You learn how. That’s what grownups do, Aidan.”

“I know. I know. I just wanted to _not_ have to deal with things.” He pauses. A gull cries as it flies over them, and they both look up at it. “I didn’t think about how things with Richard would look.”

“It’s not about how they looked. It’s about how they _were_.” Dean feels the anger bubbling under his skin, threatening to burst through. He trudges away from the sandcastle, up the hill toward the car park. “God, Aidan. It’s not like I thought I was that special, you know? But for fuck’s sake, you didn’t need to make me feel like you _loved me_ , if it wasn’t really like that.”

“I do love you.” Aidan follows him up at a run, moving more easily with his feet bare. “Dean, I’ve loved you since I met you. I chose you over _Neverland_.” 

“Yes, and don’t you ever let me fucking forget that, will you? Make sure you always remind me of all the things that you’re missing because of me.”

He takes a step back. “That’s not what I meant.”

“Then what did you mean, Aidan?” Dean laughs, the edges shaky, an earthquake in his throat. “What are you trying to tell me?”

“That I don’t want _anyone_ else!” Aidan blurts out desperately. “That I never have! You’re it for me. You’ve always been it. It is _you_ for me. That’s it. Forever.” 

“Then what has all this been about?”

“I’m an _idiot_. Because I can see pixie dust on people and it attracts me to them because I’m a Lost Boy, and I’m always going to be one, and I don’t want to be like that, but it’s how I am.” His fingers curl around Dean’s wrist. “I love you. I would love you even if you didn’t breathe pixie dust like you do. You’re like Neverland on earth for me. You must know that.”

“Then why did you say-?”

“Because I’m a child.” Aidan’s voice catches in his throat - a laugh and a sob rolled into one. “I’m not a grownup. I’m doing my best to get there, but I’m not yet.” He closes his eyes. “When you introduced me to Richard, I was excited to see this friend of yours I hadn’t known before, because I love meeting your friends. I didn’t expect him to have been to Neverland. I... latched onto him, when I realized it. It’s hard not to, because I miss it, Dean. I do, even though I’m so happy with you. Sometimes I still miss it.”

Dean clenches his jaw. “So when you said that you would be happy to be with him instead...”

“I was just being cruel,” Aidan breathes out. “I wouldn’t be happy to be with him, not because he’s not wonderful, but because he’s not you.” He draws Dean’s face in and up to press their foreheads together, and Dean lets him. He keeps his eyes open, to see Aidan’s close, his eyelashes fluttering against both of their cheeks. “I was angry at you for being too busy for me, and I was cruel because of that.”

Dean’s fingers curl in Aidan’s shirt, pull his hips in closer. “I’m not ever too busy for you.”

“You are sometimes,” Aidan disagrees gently. “But that’s alright. You need to be. You have a life, and you need to live it. And I need to live my life too. And that’s okay. We can share a life and also be apart sometimes, right?”

“Of course. Most people don’t spend all their time together, even when they want to.”

Aidan kisses him. “I just want a life with you. I want to be in your life.”

“You _are_.”

“I want to take care of you too, sometimes. I don’t want you to feel like I’ve made you feel lately ever again.” He kisses him again, a harsh press of his mouth to Dean’s. “I don’t ever want you to tell me to look for happiness somewhere else. I’ve got all I need right here.”

Dean doesn’t say anything, because he’s not sure what to say. So he curls his hand into Aidan’s hair, stands on the balls of his feet to kiss him back. 

Behind them, the sandcastle begins to erode, the water takes it back to the sea. But they can always build it again.


End file.
